1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a bakery oven with continuous baking process comprising a baking chamber provided with a charging opening and a discharging opening, and containing a spiral conveying device provided with a helicoidal path for conveying, during the baking process, the bakery, Viennese bread products or the like, arranged on plates, trays, racks or the like, from the charging opening to the discharging opening.
This invention relates to the field of the agro-food industry and, more particularly, to manufacturers of production material intended for bread, such as Viennese bread bakeries or the like.
2. Discussion of Background Material
There are already known bakery ovens with continuous baking process which are generally incorporated into complete production lines allowing a high production cycle.
Experience has established that the best baking consistency for the products is achieved by conferring to the plates, trays, racks or the like some degree of rotation about a vertical axis during their stay within a baking chamber through which flows a hot-air stream.
There are already known ovens with at least one rotating trolley. More particularly, the plates, trays, racks or the like, onto which are arranged the products to be baked, are superposed on the ladder cleats a trolley is fitted with. This trolley is then engaged into the baking chamber of the oven. Then, appropriate driving means ensure its rotation about a vertical axis, thus exposing the trolley, from every angle, to the action of the horizontal hot-air stream generated by blowing and heating means.
If, in these ovens equipped with a rotating trolley, the baking of the products arranged on a same plate is very uniform, baking consistency is not always perfectly achieved from one plate to another, because it is difficult to have the same heat at the top, in the center and at the bottom of the trolley, especially since the plates remain, during the complete baking process, at the same level on this trolley.
In fact, since these ovens with a rotating trolley operate with discontinuous loads of a stack of plates filling a trolley, they cannot easily be integrated into industrial production lines in which the plates, trays, racks or the like are continuously coming from a processing unit located upstream.
In order to try to cope with the above-mentioned disadvantages, there has been provided an oven integrating a spiral conveying device comprising a continuous conveyer in the form of a spiral belt provided with radial rods or a chain provided with radially extending arms.
In fact, these above-mentioned rods or arms form the bearing means for the plates, trays or the like through the baking chamber of the oven. However, such a configuration has a number of disadvantages. Because the trays, plates or the like do indeed rest on the spiral conveyer simply by gravity, they proceed with difficultly along curved paths, and are caused to move in an aleatory manner with respect to each other. Also, some of these trays, plates or the like meet each other during their conveying, and continually cause jammings on the spiral conveyer. This results in frequent interruptions of the, which require the intervention of an operator.
Moreover, it should be appreciated that the use of the above-described a continuous spiral conveyer has a high cost. Moreover, there are difficulties in causing the spiral conveyer to progress with small curvature radii with respect to its width and the spiral conveyer requires complex mechanisms to be driven, switched on and for its looping path between the top and the bottom of its helicoidal path. These are disadvantages that the present invention attempts to solve.